Friday, February 26, 2016

Returning Dignity

By Matthew Shoen

Historic Map of St. Lawrence County from davidrumsey.com

When people approach
historic preservation there are oftentimes a number of motivations at play.
We’re seeking tax credit money for redevelopment, or trying to uncover
the history of a neighborhood in order to preserve the look of a street. There
is however another reason to pursue historic preservation. Preservation, in so
many ways, is an act of returning dignity to buildings and communities.

For twenty-two
years I lived in St. Lawrence County. It is an isolated place in the nebulous part of New York State most people assume is part of Canada with too few people and too few jobs
outside farming and the penal system.In
St. Lawrence County we were taught by our circumstances not to have pride, or feel positive about our surroundings. The land was beautiful, this was
never in doubt, but the built-in human landscape of towns like Potsdam, Canton,
Ogdensburg, and Massena was too easy to deride. We are among the three
poorest counties in the state, the largest county in New York with one of the
smallest populations. Canton and Potsdam had the ivory towers of great
universities, but these affluent schools never felt like they were part of the county, they were fortified
castles sitting in our impoverished midst. The rest of the county had a
depressive air. It never felt like there was anything to be proud of. Home was home, but the county's economic depression retarded any desire to meaningfully connect with local history.

When I began
working as a preservationist I started to poke around, glancing at St. Lawrence
County’s contributions to the National Register of Historic Places. I was
surprised in all honesty to see so much. The library near my summer camp had
been listed in 1982 while my Town Hall in Lisbon had been included in 1980.
There were in fact three separate buildings from Lisbon on the Register, more
than I’d ever expected. Reading the nominations for these buildings, and dozens more
spread all across the county, I felt proud of my community. I had been
reconnected to the history of my home and enlightened to its rich two-hundred
year story, a history which interconnected with so much in New York.

For example, the Russell Town
Hall was endowed by Seymour Knox I father of Seymour Knox II who’d go on
to help expand the Albright Art Museum into its current form. Meanwhile, in
Ogdensburg sits the McEwan Customs House the oldest standing federal building
in the country.Ogdensburg was also home
to Frederick Remington the great artist of America’s Western expansion, as well as a historic gallery of Remington’s works. This is just a small selection of the trove of information I found. All these
facts, when viewed individually, are completely disconnected. However, collectively they articulate the history of St. Lawrence County. The actions of
thousands of men, women, builders, architects, philanthropists, mayors, and
pastors was mixed together in an invisible past which required dedicated research to pull into a narrative. That narrative was the nomination form for the National
Register of Historic Places.

In Buffalo we’ve
seen the economic value of historic preservation and tax credits. We've seen
the importance of pulling the city away from the cycle of destruction and urban
renewal which has failed to spark economic development. I sincerely hope that
someday these economic benefits reach St. Lawrence County and tax credits
become the new wave of development. For now however, the National Register is
serving a unique purpose in the area. It is articulating the value of our
buildings, the social history we often loose sight of in the face of economic woes. The Register reminds us who came before us, what they did, and
how they contributed to the evolution of New York State.

The National Register returns dignity to the county and offers visual proof of what we have to be proud of. Buildings like the Customs House, the lighthouse on Crossover Island, and Richardson Hall each gain so much by their inclusion in the Register. They qualify for tax credits and are guaranteed protection against future degradation, but the people who walk past these buildings each day also gain something. They gain access to their past, much of which has been scattered or lost. Buildings which previously may have been eye-catching now have a history which ties the county's past to the lives of those who currently live there.

The St. Lawrence at dusk from vanagontraveling.com

Between the swift current of the St. Lawrence River and the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains
there are sixty-six individual buildings and structures and eight historic
districts on the National Register of Historic Places. It is a small but
significant number which will only grow. In its growth the Register’s listings will
continue telling stories about St. Lawrence County and the people whose lives
were formed by the landscape of rivers, mountains, farms, and human achievement cemented in architecture.

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